


The Path of Least Resistance

by homsantoft (tofsla)



Category: Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: Consent Issues, M/M, Sex Pollen, Unresolved Romantic Tension, Wham Splat Porn
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-03
Updated: 2016-03-03
Packaged: 2018-05-24 13:51:17
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,513
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6155743
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tofsla/pseuds/homsantoft
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A spring day, shortly after Dorian has broken off his casual relationship with Bull without explanation. Unfamiliar red flowers in a shallow stream.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Path of Least Resistance

**Author's Note:**

> This is a sex pollen fic, so there's some debate about consent to be had; and oh boy is it had. The sex here is discussed & thoroughly wanted but takes place under the influence of hand-wave-y magic. Take under advisory.
> 
> James suggested the interpretation, Jasper kept me company through writing it, and Jared rooted out my typos. 
> 
> This is my entry for this round of Wham! Splat! Porn!; I was tagged by barkour with the prompt "a red flower."

For the first day since the turn of the year, the sun is strong enough to warm. Low on the mountainside, below the tree-line, and the ground is weeks thawed; the second flowers, the true spring ones, beginning to blossom. 

Everything smells mossy and damp, and by the stream the Bull's feet leave deep prints in the soft ground.

"What a strange day," Dorian says. His face is turned up toward the sun, his eyes half-closed. Beautiful—always, even before the Bull knew how he came apart. Now, though, especially. Wreathed in light.

"It's called spring," Janna says. "I'm sure you've heard of it."

"But met it rarely," Dorian agrees.

A laugh. "Wet and dry, I suppose."

"Oh yes," Dorian says. Considers. "On occasion the dry season proves regrettably long."

"And I'm meant to think you're still talking about the weather, right," Sera says.

"You're free to think whatever you like," Dorian says. "I'm sure I couldn't stop you, regardless."

Where Janna's laugh is low and rough, Sera's is raucous. She keeps things normal, as far as the Bull's concerned, and that's good. Normal although Dorian is laying out unconscious barbs for the Bull in a way he hasn't done since the early days, before they were friends—before they fucked. 

Dorian on his back on the bed, hands tied to the headboard, arching and gasping, Bull, Bull—

His skin damp with sweat, bruises blooming across his hips.

Kiss me. As though you mean it.

"It's early for blood lotus, but keep an eye out," Janna says. "We might get lucky. The scouts at the cascade camp could do with something nice and dull to worry about."

Looking for red, the Bull sees red: bright pebbles on the bed of the stream, the deeper shade of first leaves, still delicate where they begin to unfurl. And there, yes: blood lotus on the far margin, still in bud, only the slightest hint of red petals among the dark leaves.

He wades across, the water barely reaching halfway to his knees; stoops to check his find, pulls out his knife to cut a stalk loose for inspection.

And yes: yes, it's blood lotus, still young for use. But the red that caught his eye, that was some other flower, unknown, twining between the stems.

"You've had luck?" Dorian asks, bending beside him, not so distant that he'd let it get in the way of work, and a good thing too. "Ah—hmm. Not useable. And what—"

He reaches out toward the other flower, looks like he hardly realises he's doing it; blinks and stops short, fingers spread just above the heavy blood-red petals.

"No," he calls out over his shoulder, preempting a question Janna didn't ask. "Nothing useful here. And I'd suggest you stay on that side of the stream."

"Problem?" the Bull asks, low.

"I'm not certain," Dorian says. "I think I rather dislike that flower, though. It feels—"

It feels, in fact, like the first stages of lotus intoxication—a warmth in his body, and a vividness to the sounds and colours around him that would be the prelude to actual hallucination. Were it lotus intoxication.

He can't smell the blood lotus, reckons if it's too young to be useful it should probably be too young to provoke this kind of reaction, too.

Beside him, Dorian swallows hard.

"I think we should move on," he says.

The Bull can feel the radiating warmth of Dorian's skin, so nearly touching his own where they crouch together. He wants to touch—he always wants to touch—but there's something to it, an uncomfortable edge, as though if he slipped for a moment he'd be reaching for Dorian with the same thoughtlessness that had seen Dorian reaching for the flower. Go on: touch something forbidden.

"Yeah," he says, and stands hurriedly, head swimming slightly at the suddenness of his movement.

Dorian, following, must lose his footing on the pebbled bed of the stream; stumbles.

His hand catches at the Bull's arm for support.

A completely ordinary thing. No reason to think twice about it.

But it shocks through the Bull like summoned lightning. He sees it on Dorian's face, too, mirrored back at him; a charge between them.

Hasn't there always been a charge between them?

Yeah. Sure. They were people who were going to fuck and then they were people who were fucking, and then they were—whatever they are now. People who are—

Unhappily in love, for the Bull's part. But what about Dorian?

I can't, he'd said. The sort of confused anger that threatened to spill over into frustrated tears, though Dorian would never allow himself that. Bull, I apologise, I simply—

A helpless gesture.

The Bull had said: you don't have to explain.

Had meant it.

Had said: guess I'll catch you later, then.

Gone back to his room, and stared at the ceiling, and wondered if even a Tamassran would've been able to straighten his head out this time. Wondered if he'd even want it if they could.

"Sort your personal problems out on your own time," Janna calls, and it has the Bull jerking away from Dorian, Dorian jerking away from the Bull, the both of them startled out of whatever the fuck that moment had been. 

Dorian looks guilty. Stunned, his pupils blown wide, still like there's a kind of intoxication getting to them both. Heating both their bodies, messing with their boundaries. Not lotus. Something unknown.

That's the worst part. The Bull can ride out a high if he knows how it'll go, can take the right precautions, counteract it the right way.

Dorian presses a hand to his face, shudders.

"Janna," he says, "I'm afraid there was something toxic on the river bank. Fighting may not be the best of ideas."

He's touching the Bull again with his free hand, pressing hot skin to the Bull's chest, against the breastbone. He doesn't seem to know he's doing it.

"Back to base, then," Janna says. "Straight to the healer, no arguments. And you get to explain to Madame de Fer where her free day just vanished to."

It's a pretty solid idea, if they can make it that far. 

Heat. Heat between them always, sparking anger and then lust, desire. Yeah, friendship too, but never without some kind of an edge. So many red feelings, twisting them together, twisting them apart.

I want you. It doesn't mean sex, but he can't separate it from sex either, doesn't know how else to express it. Qunari love their friends.

Not like this.

I _want_ you.

He never said it, of course; never found the right moment.

Here, now, Dorian is gritting his teeth; wrenches his hand away. A release of pressure can't feel like a blow.

It does.

Control.

A row of bottles in a too-bright room. You will learn to resist the effects of every substance commonly used to compromise a subject for the extraction of information. You will be questioned as many times as it takes to satisfy us that you are competent to serve beyond our borders. For anything you divulge beyond your rank and number, you will be punished.

Hissrad. Do you understand?

Begin.

"Aphrodisiac," the Bull says, low enough for only Dorian to hear. Insidious shit; doesn't just make you disoriented enough to give yourself away, but makes you want to on top of it.

" _Thank_ you," Dorian hisses back. "I'm quite aware. I'm familiar with the type of plant, if not this specific—oh, Maker—"

How to deal with it? If he was on Seheron, if he was Hissrad, he'd register himself with the Tamassrans and let them fuck it out of him. Simple, clean, efficient. No harm done. If they were back at Skyhold, maybe he'd have let Candy tie him down with the strongest rope they could find and make the best of it; not really his style, to let it be about him, but it could've passed.

It couldn't.

This is the problem: yeah, he wants to fuck. He wants to fuck with an unusual, unnatural intensity that edges beyond the boundaries of want and into the other thing. Feels the need for it, and oh, yes, it _is_ need now, building and building in him. Between his legs. In the tips of his fingers. 

But it's not really about that, the act in a general sense. Janna's hot enough, in a stocky, sharp-edged kind of way, but if she offered right now to take care of his damn dick, he wouldn't be interested.

Being too attached is a messy business. The Qun knows that, tried to teach him. 

It never stuck.

His head is still spinning slightly. Dorian drifts closer to him over and over again, pulls himself away with difficulty each time, frowning; his steps are unsteady, uncoordinated.

The Bull could pick him up and pin him to that tree, that one right there, trunk broad and smooth-barked—Dorian wouldn't say no—

Couldn't say no, probably. No good, no fucking good. 

_Control._

Sera and Janna are keeping their distance; Sera worried, Janna watchful.

"Boss," he says, "you should knock me out."

"If you think I'm carrying you back to base, you can think again," Janna says, and that'd be a good one, wouldn't it, if he was less out of his head. She comes up to his waist, but it's a near thing. He registers the humour of it, but distantly. Doesn't feel it enough to laugh properly.

Dorian had a reason to break things off. Remember that. 

Fuck.

"I'm serious," he snaps. "This thing, this—whatever it is, it's fucking with my control, getting in my head. I'm not going to hurt anyone."

You promised me. If I go mad—

"Bull," Dorian says, voice sharp and clear for all that he's flushed, sweating. "A word. Alone."

The Bull looks to Janna in appeal. "Boss—"

"Trust me, Janna," Dorian says.

She glances from the Bull to Dorian and back again, eyes narrowed.

"You," she says, pointing at the Bull, "hear him out. You," to Dorian, "get over it. Sera, you run on ahead. Vivienne and Blackwall on duty. Scouts to bring these two in. We've lost enough time. I'll knock both of them out myself if need be. I fancy they'll collapse first, though."

Janna's a good boss, a good friend. But she doesn't suffer fools. In a way it really does make him think of his old Tama, harshness and kindness and the line between the two blurred by tone. 

Neither would like the comparison.

His thoughts are fraying. He's in a room on Par Vollen with open windows looking onto dense jungle, unseen creatures crying and rustling through the thick vibrant green, his Tama reading verses; learn this well. He's in an interrogation chamber on Seheron, head thick with poppy-milk. 

He's bending over Dorian in the dark to press a kiss to the bare hollow of his throat.

The first step is to identify the poison. The first—

"Bull," Dorian says again.

One foot in front of the other. Repeat it.

Stand, finally, alone. The water singing behind, the branches above.

"We can't," the Bull says.

"Two grown men who want each other?" Dorian asks. Shakes his head as though to clear it. "Surely a scandal. I—you must know—I didn't stop climbing into your bed because I don't—"

"You aren't," the Bull says, breaks off. He can't look at Dorian and say it. Wants too badly to touch. "You had a reason, you just don't remember it right now."

Dorian's laugh is ragged. He looks almost composed, only unfocused, but here it can be heard: his control is as tenuous a thing as the Bull's. 

"I _remember._ I'm not—" A sigh. "I remain myself. Despite this—inconvenience. It wasn't a good reason, by the way. I knew that even at the time. I only—"

Dorian's turn to look away, face tilted up once again to the sun. 

"When enough things of this nature have ended badly," he says, in the flat tone of one reciting scripture, "one develops certain ways of dealing with them. It is better by far to cut the thing off at the first sign of attachment rather than risk—why am I telling you this?"

"Aphrodisiac," the Bull says dumbly; and then, because he's hardly immune to the damn thing himself, he breaks one of his own rules. "Risk what?"

"One's _heart_ ," Dorian says, with wretched bitterness. "But it seems all I get for my caution is to stand here and feel that I may die if you don't touch me, and to be forced to admit that I understand why you refuse me besides. Of all the people I could want, it would have to be the one who's too courteous to fuck me merely because we find ourselves uninhibited."

Uninhibited is one thing. This weird desperate longing—I'll die if you don't—I need—that's something else. What is it? He can't hold the thought, doesn't want to hold it, wants to just let go—can't let go, mustn't.

Dorian is trembling. His shoulders, his hands. There's an unhappy set to his mouth that the Bull hates. 

He says: "You might kiss me, at least. Let me dream that you'd mean it, even without this."

"I'd mean it," the Bull says. "Fuck. We have to—"

It's only getting worse. 

"We have to get back. Shut ourselves in different rooms. Talk about it when we can think straight."

In an incredibly shitty corner of the Fade, two gravestones stood—stand, probably. 

He knows the words on them. He learned the trick of not dreaming decades ago, but he remembers them sometimes in his sleep all the same.

"Would it be a problem for you," Dorian says, falters. He takes so long to collect himself that the Bull wonders if he's finally beyond words. He's getting there himself. "Would it be a problem for you to work through this with someone willing? Do you feel that would be inappropriate?"

His hand is on the Bull's arm, fingers curling hard.

The Bull tries to remember why the answer is less straightforward than Dorian thinks. "No," he says. "But sex isn't complicated for me the way it is for you."

"You're saying that your consent is—what—less important?"

They're standing so close. The heat of Dorian along the whole front of his body. 

The Bull is very aware of the place where Dorian's dick is nearly touching his leg.

"If they have a good time and I have a good time," the Bull says, "I generally don't worry about it. I'd have a good time."

"So," Dorian says, "would I. Is that so difficult to believe?"

"No."

"Oh," Dorian breathes, as though the Bull has given him permission.

"But with you—ugh. It's different. You might not be able to look at me tomorrow. I can't be alright with that. You're—"

Dorian kisses him. Only a kiss, that hair-fine space keeping them from full body contact. A hand on the Bull's arm, a hand on a horn. The Bull groans desperately, Dorian's lips sending more of that lightning-sharp arousal crashing through him, ungentle.

"I promise," Dorian says. 

An impossible, reckless promise. The Bull wants so much to believe it. Knows, knew even before, that Dorian still wanted him. 

"I _promise,_ " Dorian says. "I won't run away from you. I never promised you that drunk, did I?"

He didn't. He promised he'd be good in bed. He promised he'd be discreet, as though that mattered to the Bull. Oh, he'd kept those promises.

"I promise," Dorian says a third time, softer, and parts his lips for the Bull to kiss.

The Bull doesn't sob with relief, but he _feels_ it, could collapse under it; does, in a way, the two of them stumbling together to their knees in the moss.

Frantic kisses, kisses for every night that Dorian hasn't come to him, for every time he'd seen Dorian doing something completely ordinary and been struck all over again by that stupid fucking want. He'd let Dorian go. He would still, if Dorian wanted it. You can't hold a person. Even now, he knows it. But in this moment, there's this: uncoordinated kisses, messy kisses, blurring together. Kisses like being young—fumbling, learning.

Dorian's hands on the back of his head, clinging desperately.

Desire, red and hot between them as it always has been, mirrored and mirrored and mirrored until it grows larger than itself, larger than them.

Is that how reflection works? Pointless thought, strange and distracted as he feels.

It doesn't matter now. There is only this: Dorian pushing him gently down onto his back, kissing every part of his face, his neck, his throat. The press of Dorian's thigh against his dick, the roll of Dorian's hips, searching for relief; shuddering through it, body convulsing, only finding it wasn't any kind of relief at all.

Something he should be remembering—not about Dorian, not about this. External.

It slips from his grasp. It's too ephemeral, and Dorian is so damn solid, so alive under his hands. Vivid. He'd thought that earlier, hadn't he? It's truer now. Dorian's pulse thuds in his wrists where they're pressed to the Bull's neck. His breath comes in frantic gasps. Shaking and shaking and shaking apart—or is that the Bull—both, it's both, clothes disarrayed, skin to skin here and there although only a third of Dorian's buckles are undone. Those flashes of heat every time.

When the Bull gets his hand on Dorian's dick Dorian keens with it, up on hands and knees with his face buried against the Bull's neck. Every breath washing damp across the Bull's skin. No finesse, and hopefully Dorian will complain about that later, demand the treatment he deserves—let the Bull take care of him properly, like he always wants to. Hopefully—even through the dizzy, heady rush of sex, of Dorian here and frantic with want, hope finds room. Blooms in him.

As intensely aware of it all as he is, as desperate, Dorian spilling weakly across the Bull's stomach is enough to set the Bull off again too, though he's still feeling aftershocks from the last time; not much come left, either, for all that the wild flare of his orgasm through his body is as powerful as before. The points of his horns gouge the moss as his body shakes.

How long does it last? The Bull's awareness of time is a hazy thing, instants stretching and hours vanishing. He lives for a year in the slow press of Dorian's mouth to his chest, the slide of his hand along the Bull's side. But now, breathless and sore, every part of him too sensitive, where have they landed? The sun is lower, at least; the sky shading pink and orange behind the trees.

"There," Dorian is saying. "I'm still here, everything is alright—there—"

A careful hand on his cheek. He's—he can't be—he really is crying, a sort of bone-deep emotional exhaustion that he can't really understand. Not sadness, nothing world-shaking and violent. But shit, how much tension must he have been carrying without letting himself get a good look at it?

Wouldn't his reeducators be pissed?

Weird thought. Like they didn't have bigger things to be pissed at him for. Black powder and smoke.

That makes him laugh, just as impossibly, with that same edge of exhaustion.

"Come here," Dorian says, but bends to him instead; kisses him on the lips with no kind of desperation at all.

"You alright?" the Bull asks.

Dorian gives him a meaningful look, but doesn't mention the crying. "Everything feels a little unreal, I suppose," he admits; traces a hand idly down the centre of the Bull's chest. "This is not particularly how I imagined the _I made a terrible mistake rejecting you_ conversation going."

"You don't regret it," the Bull says. Hazards, with the feeling of making a cast.

"I regret the fact that we must have traumatised several scouts and annoyed Janna to the point of our possible expulsion from the Inquisition. Also the state of my clothes, and of my knees, which I must tell you are not as young as they used to be." He smiles, a strange, cautious thing. Could be nerves, after everything. "I regret rejecting you. You were correct, of course—we need to talk about it. In, as you say, our right minds. And in private, preferably."

"I'd tell everyone," the Bull says. "Uh, if they hadn't just heard. Hey, Dorian?"

"Mm?"

"I'm proud of you. Going for what you want."

"And to think—it only required magical intoxication." He stretches forward, kisses the Bull again, only briefly. "I don't believe I said anything untrue. Did you?"

"No," the Bull says, lets the word settle, simple and heavy.

"Well," Dorian says. "I suppose I've heard of worse beginnings for relationships."

The Bull laughs. "Tevinter."

"Oh yes."

Hope it is, then. Real hope. Bright and living among the stones.


End file.
